St. Petersburg Place, and-was attended by} 'The new Chinese Minister to France and all the' leading' Jewish families and con-! Italy, H.E. Ya Keng has now arrived here' and has taken over the duties of his post from his predecessor, H.E. Ching Chang, who will shortly leave for China. It is certainly regrettable that H.E. Ching Chang, who has spent many years in Paris and speaks French fluently, should have deen recalled on the eve of the Exhibition, The victim of circumstances entirely beyond his control, it is to be hoped that he will not, be too closely shaved when he returns to Peking and that he will be given some post in which his knowledge of foreign agains will not be entirely thrown away. His successor, also a Manchu, now sees Europe for the first time. He comes to Paris from the Tsungli Yamen and was previously Minister to Japan. Personally he is tall but much bowed and appears to be on the wrong side of sixty: He is accompanied by his wife (a Eurasian from Shanghai) two sons and: two daughters, All three Indies are dressed in complished the last: stage of his journey with a truly Chinese absence of. haste. He enjoyed three days' rest after landing at Marseilles and then came on to Paris by a slow train, taking 20 hours to cover 540 miles, With his personal attendants he occupied a first-class saloon carriage, his wife and daughters being relegated to second-class compartment.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.